There are few companies these days that don’t have a healthy interest in cybersecurity, the reason being that nearly all companies store sensitive data on computers which are always potentially in danger of being hacked. That data might be customer credit card information if the business does e-commerce, or it might be employee information that could conceivably be stolen, in which case identity theft might be an issue. Cybersecurity should be a concern for virtually every business, but help might be on the way, in the form of ever-improving artificial intelligence. Here are three potential ways that AI and cybersecurity could be working in tandem in the coming months and years.

 

Time-Saving Possibilities

Cybersecurity solutions at the moment rely primarily on signature-based or rule-based methodology, and institutional knowledge and human intervention have to enter into that. These rules must be updated continuously, and that can be a slow and meticulous process which monopolizes employee time. AI, however, might be a way to free up those employees if it can be trained to update the rules governing cybersecurity processes. Experts feel this will soon be possible, and AI will likely do a better and more efficient job than humans. That’s because humans updating cybersecurity systems tend to only look at one specific process, while AI will be able to get a complete picture of the enterprise and will, therefore, be in a better position to make suggestions.

 

The Search for Anomalies

At its core, it could be stated that AI is a way of training systems to mimic human behavior through continuous learning. Cybersecurity will always contain a human element, but artificial intelligence can already learn about the system it must protect as it handles its assigned tasks. A logical extension of that is for AI to search for anomalies in such systems, which could be the influence or signature of a hacker trying to break in, for instance. AI can quickly analyze enormous amounts of data, so rapid detection of incidents and possible malicious behavior is not going to be all that challenging for it.

 

Visibility Gaps

Perhaps the most fascinating potential link between cybersecurity and AI, however, comes in the area of so-called “visibility gaps.” These are gaps that occur because of a fragmented approach to protecting various systems, whether by a private company or sometimes by the federal government. As AI grows more advanced and programs are assigned to protect sensitive data, the programs will be able to conceive of ways to close these gaps, making interagency communication much more straightforward. This sharing of data will be a way to identify malicious patterns of behavior in a system that a human analyst could easily miss.  

The CyberSAFE program offered by CertNexus has more details about protecting your data and devices, and it will teach you more about cybersecurity. As for the connection to AI, as more advanced versions are developed in the coming years, both government bodies and the private sector have likely only scratched the surface of the possible interfacing between these two forms of technology.